Or anyone else who know, but I named UncaStuart specifically because of his post in the jury duty thread: What are the Turtles? My sister bought a pick-up a while back that had a sticker on the tailgate that said, “I’m a Turtle.” She thought it was cute so she left it, but we’ve been unsure what it means. What do the Turtles do or stand for? Should she remove the sticker since she’s not a Turtle?
“I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it,” Jack Handy
It’s a sort of jokey organization (as far as I can tell). My mom and grandma and I belong, but your initiation is just some innuendo laden questions (at least mine was), i.e. “Name a four-letter word for a woman than ends in u-n-t.” (aunt).
The whole point of it seems to be that if someone asks you, “Are you a Turtle?” You must reply, “You bet your sweet ass I am!” or buy everybody a drink. Fun for embarrassing/scamming drinks off of other Turtles in “prim and proper” situations.
That’s all I know, and I’m a Turtle! It may actually be a proper organization somewhere, but that’s the version I know.
“Eppur, si muove!” - Galileo Galilei
Actually, now that I think of it, I have seen a set of bylaws. They mostly centered around drinking and the buying of drinks.
“Eppur, si muove!” - Galileo Galilei
Gr*Kat:
I can’t add much to what Gaudere has covered. My experience with it was as a high school student in the early 60s, when the embarrassment quotient for having to say “you bet your ass I am!” in public was a lot greater. I was inducted by a bar owner in South Lake Tahoe who chose to overlook my underagedness. After having been ceremoneously chided for coming up with all the off-color answers to the word play questions, I and the rest of the inductees were told that it was assumed that, as hard working folk, all Turtles automatically owned an ass to do the heavy lifting. Therefore, the “sweet ass” in the required reply was of the braying kind, not the gluteal. This supposedly sanitized the answer, and was another part of the low-humor wordplay.
Back then, this was all very informal. Don’t know if it’s been adopted, coopted, and commercialized since then. If it is still as loose as it was, then there should be no prob with keeping the bumper sticker on.
She just better know what to say now when people ask if she’s a Turtle! It does appear to be very loosely organized, if at all; still you’d be surprised at how many Turtles you sometimes run into. The Illuminati conspiracy is just a smokescreen; it’s Turtles who will take over the world! (then we’ll go on a bender and you’ll get it back the next day. But it’ll be nice while it lasts)
“Eppur, si muove!” - Galileo Galilei
“non sunt multiplicanda entia praeter necessitatem”
– William of Ockham